Apocalypse - Beyond the Threshold of Darkness

Greetings, hunters!

It’s time for another major Ghost Exile update, and this one brings a lot of changes: a new ghost type, two new maps, personal player rooms, a completely redesigned contract menu, a new rating and reward system, new objectives, additional content, and much more.

Some familiar systems have been significantly reworked, while others have been rebuilt almost from scratch.

Let’s take a closer look.

A new ghost

A new ghost type has arrived: the Ghoul.

Unlike many other ghosts, the Ghoul gradually changes the conditions of your investigation as it unfolds. With each level, its abilities become more dangerous, and familiar ways of surviving a hunt become less reliable. Like a wild beast, it marks its territory, grows faster, and eventually starts taking away the places players rely on for safety.

Level 1

The Ghoul gathers branches into piles to mark its territory. Each pile increases its speed.

Level 3

During hunts, the Ghoul can destroy hiding spots. The more hunts you survive, the fewer places you’ll have left to hide.

Level 5

The Ghoul becomes incredibly fast. Outrunning it is nearly impossible, so find a hiding spot before it’s too late. Once it catches a victim, it drags them away to kill them. While you’re being dragged, you still have a chance to fight back.

Player Rooms

Until now, most of your time between contracts was spent in the shared lobby. Now, every hunter has a space of their own.

We’ve added personal player rooms. We didn’t want to limit you to a handful of preset designs, so we’ve also introduced a full customization system that lets you decorate freely. You can place furniture and decorations throughout your room, moving and rotating them almost any way you like.

We’ll continue expanding the selection of available items over time. Between investigations, you can now take a break from ghost hunting and spend some time making your space your own.

New maps

This update adds two maps to the list of locations you can investigate. One is brand new, while the other returns after an extensive rework. We’ve worked to make both locations richer and more detailed, each with its own atmosphere and distinct layout to explore.

Church

Introducing a brand-new map: Church. An old church, its surrounding grounds, and the rooms beneath the building are now open for investigation. Your search will take you beyond the main church, across the grounds and into the spaces hidden below.

People once came here seeking peace. Now, the silence within these walls feels very different. Light barely filters through the windows, empty corridors lead ever deeper, and beneath the church lie places no one should have ventured into.

Warehouse

Warehouse returns with a complete overhaul. The old map has been almost entirely rebuilt, with a new layout, updated visuals, reworked surroundings, and new details throughout.

Warehouse now feels much more like a sprawling storage facility, where it’s easy to lose your bearings among the shelves and countless aisles.

Between the towering shelves, it’s easy to lose sight of someone just a few steps ahead. Your flashlight reveals only a small stretch of the aisle. And when footsteps echo somewhere between the rows, you can only hope they belong to one of your teammates.

Completely Redesigned Contract Menu

The contract selection menu had remained largely unchanged for a long time, even as the number of settings and systems involved in preparing an investigation continued to grow. We decided it was time for a complete overhaul, changing both the menu’s appearance and the way you set up a contract.

Map selection, difficulty, additional content, and modifiers are now brought together in one redesigned interface. Key information about your upcoming investigation is easier to read, and you can see more clearly how your chosen settings will affect the contract before you begin.

Over time, mechanics that significantly change the gameplay had become mixed in with smaller tweaks to individual settings. We’ve now split them into two distinct categories: additional content and modifiers.

Rating system

Alongside the contract overhaul, we’re introducing a new system designed to reflect players’ experience. Your rating will serve as another measure of your progress, directly tied to the difficulty of the conditions you choose and how successfully you complete your objectives.

There are now two multipliers: a reward multiplier and a rating multiplier. The more additional content and modifiers you enable, the higher both multipliers become. The bonus added to your rating multiplier is usually half the bonus added to your reward multiplier.

To earn rating points, you must exorcise the ghost. Completing objectives without performing the exorcism will not earn you any rating points.

Each of the four objectives awards 4 rating points before the multiplier is applied. You don’t have to complete them all, but completing all four and exorcising the ghost will earn you 18 points × your rating multiplier.

Each time you level up, you’ll be offered three rewards and can choose one. You don’t have to decide right away: you can claim your reward whenever you’re ready.

Reward System Overhaul

Alongside the new rating system, we’ve significantly reworked the rewards for completing contracts. Your rewards now depend directly on the conditions of the investigation. Each contract has its own reward multiplier.

This multiplier is determined by your chosen difficulty, enabled additional content, and selected modifiers. The tougher the conditions, the higher the final multiplier. It affects two main rewards:

• Money
• Rating points

Players willing to take on tougher contracts and additional challenges can earn significantly more when they succeed. However, increasing the difficulty alone won’t guarantee the maximum reward. How well you complete the objectives during the investigation now plays a major role, too.

New Bonus System

Optional objectives now have a much greater impact on your final contract rewards. Previously, completing some objectives was enough to earn part of the bonus. Now, earning the maximum reward means finishing the job. To receive the full completion bonus, you must complete all four objectives in your current contract.

Completing all four objectives awards bonus money and rating points, scaled by the contract’s multipliers. In addition, completing two objectives and exorcising the ghost earns you 2 Cursed Coins.

To get the most out of an investigation, correctly identifying the ghost is no longer enough. Leaving as soon as you know its type will now mean missing out on more rewards.

New Investigation Objectives

We’ve expanded the pool of objectives that can appear during a contract. The new objectives often challenge you to change your usual playstyle, avoid certain equipment, or meet specific conditions during a hunt. Some apply to the entire contract, so keep them in mind from the start of your investigation.

New objectives include:

• Survive 5 consecutive hunts without using incense and/or a crucifix.
• Survive 5 hunts without sprinting.
• Complete the contract without restoring sanity.
• Complete the contract without any hunters dying.
• Photograph the ghost outside its favorite room.
• Photograph the ghost when it isn’t hunting.
• Photograph the remains of a used crucifix.
• Survive 5 hunts in a single contract.

New Modifiers

Alongside the contract system overhaul, we’ve expanded the list of available modifiers. Modifiers adjust individual investigation conditions without introducing entirely new mechanics. Each one makes the contract a little harder in exchange for a higher reward multiplier.

Old Wiring

The old wiring can’t handle as much power. The number of lights you can have on at the same time is reduced by 50%.

Quiet One

The ghost interacts with its surroundings less often. These interactions occur 75% less frequently, making its activity harder to detect.

Frostbite

The cold slows you down. While a hunter is in a room with a temperature below freezing, their movement speed is slightly reduced.

Reckless

Every hunter starts the contract with zero sanity. Keep this in mind when choosing your equipment and planning your first moves.

Loose Mounts

Equipment mounts are unreliable. Mounted equipment has a small chance of coming loose and falling.

Shock

Whenever a hunter dies, all surviving players instantly lose 35% sanity.

Second Wind

If a hunter dies during a hunt, the ghost keeps hunting, and the hunt timer resets to its full duration.

Cursed Maps

Some maps can now become cursed. Each week, 3 maps are randomly selected to receive this status. Completing a contract on a cursed map grants +35% to your reward multiplier, but that bonus comes at a cost.

Cursed maps always have randomly selected modifiers or additional content enabled, so investigations on them will come with extra challenges.

New Additional Content: Darkness

Alongside the split between additional content and modifiers, we’re introducing a brand-new additional content option: Darkness. This mode does more than make rooms a little darker. It fundamentally changes how you use light during an investigation.

With Darkness enabled, your usual light sources are no longer available. Instead, you’ll have access to a special portable lamp that you can carry from room to room as your main source of light during the investigation.

Its power supply is limited, though. The lamp gradually runs out of charge, so you’ll need to keep an eye on its battery and return to recharge it periodically.

This is just the first level of Darkness.

Higher levels will introduce additional conditions and mechanics that make being caught in the dark far more dangerous. We’re keeping some of them under wraps for now.

New PDA Module: Map

The PDA continues to gain new features, becoming an increasingly useful tool throughout your investigations.

This update introduces a new module: Map.

You can now view the layout of your current location directly on your PDA. This is especially useful on large or complex maps, where you previously had to return to the van to check the floor plan. Now you can check room layouts and find your bearings while exploring.

Memory Usage Optimization

We’ve also worked on the technical side of the game, improving RAM usage and revising how certain game assets are loaded. The difference should be most noticeable on larger maps and during longer play sessions. We’ll continue making improvements in this area.

Other Changes

• On Apocalypse difficulty, the crucifix now activates 50% faster but is fully consumed after a single use.
• In the Shadow World, the Soul Lamp now stays lit if a player accidentally drops it.
• Made Shadow World levels II and III easier for solo players.
• Adjusted weekly objective rewards.
• Added a lobby setup tip that appears when joining a lobby.
• Fixed an issue on Apocalypse difficulty where ghosts without Freezing Temperatures evidence could cool rooms below freezing even with the boiler running.
• Fixed excessive empty space appearing when switching wardrobe tabs.
• Fixed an issue where purchased wardrobe items were not visible to some players.
• Fixed an issue where the wardrobe shop was not visible to some players.
• Updated English, Russian, German, Turkish, Chinese, French, and Spanish localizations.